by Dick Flacks on February 12, 2012
Watching the 2011 Academy Awards last January, I was mildly astonished when the finale turned out to be a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by a chorus of kids from P.S. 22 in Staten Island. I marveled that a song written some seventy-two years ago (it’s as old as I am!) continues to serve as a perfectly appropriate anthem, a centerpiece for many of life’s soundtracks. In just the last few months, Judy Collins turned the song into a children’s book and recording; the hit TV series Glee! used it as a rousing climax to its first season; James Taylor used it as a finale in his concert commemorating the 120th anniversary of Carnegie Hall, saying that it was the “anthem” of the place (remembering Judy Garland’s debut at Carnegie in 1939).
I paid attention to these happenings because the song — and its author — have played an important part in my life. The lyricist was E.Y. (Yip) Harburg, who was, in fact, the principal writer of the entire Wizard of Oz film. Back in the 1950s, when a lot of us red-diaper babies were teenagers, many of us were well-versed in the blacklist and its victims in show business. One of the prominent ones was Yip Harburg, whose Broadway musical, Finian’s Rainbow, had become a huge hit show just as McCarthyism was really gathering force. That show broke much ground: [click to continue…]
by Lawrence Bush on January 25, 2012
Edward G. Robinson (Emanuel Goldenberg, born in Bucharest, Romania), counted by the American Film Institute as among the 25 all-time greatest male film actors, died on this date in 1973, twelve days after shooting the suicide parlor scene in the science fiction classic, Soylent Green. In the course of a 50-year career in which he performed in some hundred films, Robinson was best known for his gangster roles, but also played dramatic and comic leads and supporting characters, notably in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street (both 1945). In 1950 and 1952, Robinson was called to testify three times before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and he named the names of Communists and supporters of leftwing causes to relieve himself of being blacklisted. Robinson spoke seven languages besides English, including Yiddish, Romanian and German, and was a notable modern art collector. (“I have never owned a work of art,” he said. “They owned me.”) “So effective was Robinson’s interpretation of the gangster,” wrote the New York Times in his obituary, “that many of the underworld characters found themselves affecting the Robinson character chomping down on cigar butts while snarling orders out of the sides of their mouths.”
“Some people have youth, some have beauty — I have menace.” —Edward G. Robinson
by Lawrence Bush on November 10, 2011
Historical novelist Howard Fast was born in New York on this date in 1914. His most compelling novels included Citizen Tom Paine (1943), Freedom Road (1944, about slavery and Reconstruction), My Glorious Brothers (1948, about the Maccabean struggle), and Spartacus (1951), which he began to write while in jail for refusing to give testimony to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Although Fast was a best-selling author by then, he had to self-publish Spartacus, only to see it made into a smash hit film a decade later. An active Communist, Fast was a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953. He also wrote numerous novels under the pen-name E.V. Cunningham and other books under the names Behn Boruch, Walter Ericson, and Simon Kent. Thousands of young Americans awoke to the drama of freedom struggle in their own country through the creative writing of Howard Fast.
“In the Party I found ambition, narrowness, and hatred; I also found love and dedication and high courage and integrity — and some of the noblest human beings I have ever known.” —Howard Fast
by Lawrence Bush on October 25, 2011
A national radio broadcast written by Norman Corwin, “Hollywood Fights Back!”, was aired on this date in 1947. The show featured forty-five Hollywood personalities, with an opening narrative by Judy Garland: “Have you been to a movie this week? . . . It’s always been your right to read or see anything you wanted to. But now it seems to be getting kind of complicated. For the past week, in Washington, the House Committee on Un-American Activities has been investigating the film industry. Now, I have never been a member of any political organization. But I’ve been following this investigation and I don’t like it. . . .” The two-part broadcast was a protest against HUAC’s summoning by subpoena of nineteen “unfriendly” witnesses, most of them Jews, to testify about communist influence in Hollywood. Ten of the nineteen — the Hollywood Ten — were ultimately called before the Committee, cited for contempt of Congress, and jailed. Part 2 of the star-studded “Hollywood Fights Back!” was aired on November, 2, 1947. For a brief, detailed history of McCarthyism in Hollywood, click here.
“The Hollywood Left brought the war for social and economic justice home to the movie colony. Lester Cole called writers ‘the niggers of the studio system,’ grousing that ’1 percent of what American movie-goers pay for their entertainment is allocated to … screenplays.’ Donald Ogden Stewart, whose screen credits included the Hepburn pics Holiday and The Philadelphia Story, ranked screenwriters’ status ‘below the heads of publicity but above the hairdressers.’” —Ed Rampell
